My First Experience at Global Service Jam and How we Won it!
“If you are hurt or sick, why should you go to the hospital?”
“Why is food served to you only if you have collected a coupon?”
These were some of the questions asked by a speaker at the Global Service Jam (GSJ)held in Bangalore on 29th March to 31st March 2019. Yes, these are some of the things we see happen around us. But have we challenged them or taken effort to change the system?
According to Wiki, Service design is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between the service provider and its customers.
This Global Service Jam took place in 124 locations across 6 continents. This was my first experience with Design Thinking and yes, it definitely got me out of my comfort zone. The Service Jam made the crowd question the status quo and drive innovative thinking.
At NUMA Bengaluru, we are constantly encouraged to bring about maximum value to our stakeholders — Startup, Corporates and Government — and design thinking is a critical element. I was nominated to participate in the GSJ 2019 and I thank NUMA Bengaluru for encouraging me for it.
I didn’t really know what to expect so I went with an open mind.
DAY 1 : Approach
The enthu cutlet that I am, I reached the venue (91springboard, Indiranagar) half an hour early (4:30PM). The place was just getting set up. Slowly the crowd started building up around me and I soon realised that I was the only person with no design background. Most of them were students or working professionals who studied in NID, NIFT or some college in Milan. The only thing that bound us was the Service Jam.
With over 75 participants at the venue we were divided into 9 teams. Each team consisted of about 7–9 people. The division of teams was an interesting activity. We were each given an intro postcard which had our name and photo which we had to paste on the wall under any team number. I pasted mine under Team 1. I moved to the my table marked Team 1, where I met the other 6 members of my team.
Once we settled, we were shown a 1-minute video about what a service jam was and what we were expected to do. We had to collaborate with our team in developing prototyped solutions to a shared, “surprise” theme. We were to hit the streets to research, ideate possible solutions and build prototypes to test them. And all weekend we were supposed to upload our work, sharing our discoveries with the world. In the next video they revealed the surprise theme of the year — Blue (displayed for 5secs).
We were then given chart papers, post-its and sketch pens where we jot down everything that came into our minds when we saw the theme on the screen. This exercise was the most interesting and fascinating one. Why? Because the words people wrote were unique and different. For eg; Poison (Lord Shiva swallowed and stopped the poison in his throat which turned his neck Blue). However one common word almost all of us wrote was “Deception”. Because the word Blue was written in black colour. Some may say that it is Stroop Test but then that would make things much simpler (and neither did any of us think of it either). However we finally boiled down on the word - Deception. Since our team consisted of people from different background — design students, design strategists, content strategists etc, I learnt some new words during this exercise as well, like for example — Yellow Journalism.
Anyway moving on, by the end of Day 1 we were supposed to frame our “How Might We” statement. Each word of the HMW phrase puts team members in the right mindset:
- “How” guides team members to believe the answer is out there.
- “Might” lets team members know their HMW statement might or might not work, and either possibility is okay
- “We” reminds team members that the Design Sprint is about teamwork and building on each others’ ideas
2.5hrs of brainstorming, mind-mapping, research and 4 chart papers later, we finally concluded our “How Might We” Statement. Ours read —
“HOW MIGHT WE CHANGE THE SEDATED LIFESTYLE FOR ADOLESCENTS IN ORDER TO BRING AN ACTIVE LIFESTYLE.”
It might sound “Meh” but it was damn interesting how we started with the term “Blue” and concluded with this statement by EOD. That is something I am still blown about.
DAY 2 : Concept Building
The next day kickstarted with fun activities, photo and video sessions, speaker sessions and mentoring. Some of the speakers whom we had were —
- Sriram Suryanarayanan from IBM.
- Abhijit Sinha from Project DEFY.
- Rahul Ajmera from Twist Open Innovations.
We had couple of really amazing mentors like Deepshikha Bhardwaj and Mehul Kanodia. They brought in some great ideas and thoughts that opened our minds further.
P.S : After this mentoring session, I realised what the startups go through when they have speed dating sessions with mentors. It’s all confusing in the end.
By the end of the day, with all the speaker sessions (which was mostly knowledge transfer) and mentoring sessions, I have to admit that it had been a while since I last felt my brain hurt and all of us in the team also had the same feeling. It felt good and exhausting. Though we didn’t really make any prototype yet, we decided to take some rest and come back fresh the next day with fresh thoughts.
DAY 3 : Prototyping
This was the day when we had to create a prototype and present to the jury by EOD. Naturally we were all panicking because the deadline was sooner than it felt. Though there were some interesting speaker sessions, we were quite worried about our project since the deadline to submit our prototype online was 3PM. After the speaker sessions and lunch, the time was 2:15PM. We had 45 mins to create a prototype and submit them online. I still don’t know how we all did it. Inspired by the videos displayed, we decided to create a Fitbit for kids. Well, all I can say is that we created the prototype and submitted it exactly at 3PM. I should definitely call out the two lovely team members — Pratiksha and Divya who completely built the beautiful prototype. We decided to name our Team — SHIELD. We then created a presentation for the jury and the last team to submit our ppt to the event host. Perhaps that was the reason why we were the last ones to present to the jury as well.
The presentation started at around 5PM. All the teams did an amazing job showcasing their prototype and presentation, which basically freaked us more as time flied. I vividly remember one of the teams’ presentation. They called out a few volunteers from the crowd and we were to play one round of Chinese Whisper. The game basically showed how the statement changed by the time it reached the ears of the last person. They were addressing the news that the news channels were creating and how they had come up with a solution to know its authenticity.
In the end, Team Shield was called for the presentation and we did our best job.
The results were to be out in 10 minutes. We crossed our fingers and guess what? Team SHIELD was the winner of the Bangalore Service Jam 2019! It took me 5 seconds to realise that they actually announced our name. The feeling was unbelievable and thrilling and we were all over the moon.
I might have found my new love — Design Thinking (maybe it has something to do with winning the jam ;)).
Key Takeaways from the Jam —
- We all have far more creative potential waiting to be tapped!
- No matter what background you have, Design thinking is for everyone and applicable to all walks of life.
- It transforms the way you work and think.
If you have made it till here, thank you for reading my experience. Concluding this blog with a snippet video from the event. Have fun!
